Sebastien Loeb remained in command during the second day of the action from France, and is now on his way to a record-breaking ninth WRC title if things stay as they are on the final day tomorrow.
Loeb’s closest rival Jari-Matti Latvala is now 29.7 seconds behind the Frenchman, while Latvala’s Ford teammate Petter Solberg went off the road and into a vineyard in SS9, thus dropping out of contention.
Mikko Hirvonen benefited from Solberg’s drama to move up a place; the Finn is now in a comfortable third position, 24 seconds behind Latvala and 56 seconds ahead of Mads Ostberg.
Dani Sordo goes into Day 3 in fourth position with Thierry Neuville right on his tail – 3.9 seconds behind.
Apart from Solberg, Nasser Al Attiyah also had his share of bad luck when he crashed his Citroen in the morning; the Qatari’s accident injured two spectators, with a broken arm and broken leg respectively.
Check out Solberg’s incident in the footage below.
Pos Driver Team/Car Time/Gap 1. Sebastien Loeb Citroen 2h54m33.4s 2. Jari-Matti Latvala Ford + 29.7s 3. Mikko Hirvonen Citroen + 54.0s 4. Mads Ostberg Adapta Ford + 1m46.4s 5. Dani Sordo Prodrive Mini + 1m50.5s 6. Thierry Neuville Citroen Junior + 1m54.4s 7. Ott Tanak M-Sport Ford + 2m32.0s 8. Evgeny Novikov M-Sport Ford + 2m46.2s 9. Chris Atkinson Italia Mini + 6m14.9s 10. Martin Prokop Czech Ford + 7m46.7s